The Big Green Tent (49 page)

“And who's in charge here?”

“What's the difference? Slava, Andrei, Vitya—they're all the same. The people change, but the job gets done. But when it comes to individual disbursements—questions always arise.”

“You don't think they'd help a child?”

“How should I know? It's hardly likely the Classic would want to help any Marxists. He hates communism. On the other hand, she is the daughter of political prisoners, so…”

“Exactly. Someone needs to help her. I feel very sorry for the girl. She's raggedy, hungry—and she feeds meat to her dog and doesn't buy any for herself…”

Marina showed up again toward evening. She brought a “Prague” cake for them.

The vestiges of a good upbringing
, Olga thought.

They drank tea together again, and Marina went to change her clothes. She was going to be taking a train trip. When she emerged from the bathroom, Olga gasped. The girl was wearing a light-colored raincoat instead of the child's jacket, and she wore high-heeled boots. Her eyes were made up like she was going to a drinking party in some workers' quarters out in the boondocks.

“You hardly recognize me, right? The watchers won't either. I've tested it out so many times. I go around in these rags on purpose. They're so used to them that when I get dressed up, they look right through me, like I'm not even there. Maybe I could leave this jacket with you?”

She stuffed the jacket, rolled into a ball, into her rucksack, along with her unisex sandals, and put the rucksack under the coatrack.

“Marina, why don't you let me take you to the station?” Ilya suggested.

“No, that wouldn't be right. Why do them any favors?” She shook her head, and her hair divided neatly into two parts. Marina pushed her splayed fingers through her hair, from her forehead to the back of her head, and tucked it under a barrette. Her bangs fell down to her nose. She blew them upward and shook her head.

Ilya looked at her in surprise: still just a kid, but she already understood a thing or two …

“Only you should take Hera out for a walk first. The first time while I'm still here, okay?”

Again she showed a remarkable perspicacity for her age. What a girl!

Ilya took the leash from the coatrack and gave the command:
“Let's go for a walk!”
The dog followed him out with a trusting demeanor.

Marina then turned to Olga.

“The thing is, you know, I've never been to Leningrad. One of my friends keeps telling me to come, saying it's great, with the white nights and all. I know the Leningrad scene a little—those guys came here once to visit. They promised they'd give me a place to crash.”

How did Marina change her appearance in the space of a few minutes, from a gawky adolescent into a slutty-looking runaway who hangs around train stations?
Olga wondered. Then she grew alarmed.
What if she gets lost in the role?
But Marina seemed to read her thoughts.

“Olga, I'm not the one you thought I was at first; or the other one, either. I'm someone else altogether! A third person!” She brayed with laughter. “Or maybe even a fourth…”

Without changing her tone, she gave Olga clear-cut instructions.

“I'll leave when they come back. You have to walk her twice a day, early in the morning and later in the evening. Early means about noon. I never get up before then. But you've got to give her a good run. Laikas aren't meant to live inside at all, really. The cold is good for them, and they need to be worked hard. There's a chance I may move away from the city altogether next year. We'll see…” And she looked at Olga secretively, as though expecting her to ask more questions, which she wouldn't deign to answer anyway.

But Olga sensed this, and didn't bother asking. She liked this Marina for her independence, but the effrontery of that independence irked her.

Then the girl left, and they all went to bed—Kostya in the little room next to the kitchen, Hera on the blanket by the front door, and Olga and Ilya in the bed of Karelian birch with the ornate headboard. This birch served Olga faithfully in both her first and her second marriage.

The night was not a quiet one. First Olga got the sniffles, then she started coughing. Toward morning, she woke up. Something strange was happening to her: her face felt heavy, and it had become hard to breathe. She prodded Ilya a long time before he would wake up. Then he opened his eyes and sat bolt upright.

“What happened to you?”

“I don't know, I'm having some sort of attack. Maybe we should call the emergency service?”

The medics came very quickly; they were there in only twenty minutes.

And they diagnosed Olga's problem quickly, too. They said it was Quincke's edema. They gave her an injection, sat with her for twenty minutes to make sure that the shot was working, and, before they left, said that it was most likely an allergic reaction to the dog. They should get rid of it immediately!

Olga waited until seven in the morning before calling Tamara and asking her, in a sniffly voice, to come over right away. In their school days it would have taken Tamara five minutes to run from Sobachaya Square to Olga's; now the trip from Molodezhnaya metro station took forty minutes. Tamara didn't deliberate for long, and didn't ask any questions. If Olga needed her, she needed her, and that was that. She quickly got herself ready, and in an hour she was with Olga.

When she entered the apartment she was greeted by a medium-size dog. Well, not exactly greeted—in the hall sat a dog that didn't so much as flick an ear upon the arrival of a guest.

Ilya was the one who greeted her. He took Tamara's raincoat and opened the door to the bedroom, where Olga was. The dog sat by the front door, like a stone carving.

Tamara looked at Olga and gasped.

“What happened?”

“Oh, it's Quincke's edema,” Olga said casually. “Listen, Tamara, here's the situation. This is the Kulakovs' dog. You don't know them? No? But you've heard of them, of course? You really haven't? Valentin and Zina Kulakov? No, what does Red Square have to do with it? He's a philosopher, a Marxist, and he published a magazine. It's already been more than a year since they were both sent to prison, and their fifteen-year-old girl was left behind alone. Well, she's sixteen now; but just imagine … Thank goodness she wasn't thrown into an orphanage. At first they settled her with her aunt, but the girl has quite a temper. She ran away from her aunt after only a week, and started living by herself. We have some friends in common—not close friends, though. Since the girl was going to Leningrad for a week, our friends asked us if we would take care of the dog for a while. We agreed, naturally. Yesterday she showed up—right off the street. With the dog. And it turns out I'm allergic to dog hair. I guess it's obvious. We could have taken the dog to the dacha, but my mother would never allow it, that's for sure. Mother is from the country, you know, and a dog who lives indoors makes no sense to her. And outside—we don't even have a doghouse! It would run away and get lost. And we're supposed to be taking care of her.”

Tamara didn't say anything. She wasn't from the country, and dogs living indoors made perfect sense to her—but she worked in a medical research laboratory, and she observed dogs either in cages, or in an enclosure and a vivarium. They had never kept any pets at home. Tamara's mother was mortally afraid of dogs, and she didn't like cats. When her grandmother was alive, she'd had an old cat named Marquise; but after her grandmother died, there were no more pets.

“So, Tamara, if you'd keep her at your place for the time being—her owner will be back before you know it. The dog's name is Hera.”

“While Mama's still at the sanatorium, I'll keep her; but after she comes back, I really can't, Olga,” Tamara said, surprisingly unequivocal about the matter.

“But for how long? When is your mother getting back?”

“In three days,” Tamara said firmly.

Olga sniffed, and kissed Tamara's tight little curls.

“You're so dependable, Tam. You and Galya—there's no one else like you two. If you can just keep the dog until your mother gets back, we'll think of something by then.”

“Maybe you could ask Galya? Maybe she'll take the dog?” Her eyes showed a glimmer of hope.

“As if! It's not just any old dog; it's a dissident dog! You might even say a Marxist dog! Take a dog like that into a KGB agent's den?” Olga laughed in what was almost her normal sonorous voice. “And besides, Galya's on vacation.”

Transporting the dog was problematic. Hera was determined not to get into Ilya's car. She sat next to the open door with an imperturbable expression on her face, her translucent yellow eyes staring off into the distance. They were about to give up and take the metro when Tamara had an idea.

“Ilya, get into the car first, then command her to get in.”

“Clever!” Ilya said. He got behind the wheel and, patting the seat next to him, said: “Lie down!”

The dog's eyes expressed momentary hesitation, but she stood up, sprang lightly into the front seat, and lay down, extending her paws out in front of her. Then she sighed, just like a human. The dog clearly didn't have enough room, but the look on her face showed only dignified submission.

Tamara sat in the backseat, and they drove off.

In the evening Tamara called Olga to say that the dog had run away. She had broken loose from Tamara's grasp, leash and all, and taken off.

Tamara had searched long and hard through the neighboring courtyards, asking all the dog owners whether they had seen the laika, to no avail. The next day they posted flyers around the neighborhood, and near the Molodezhnaya metro station. Then they waited. No one responded to their announcement.

In the meantime, Ilya had met with the director of the foundation and asked whether they could help a girl whose parents were in the camps. The director promised to look into it.

Three days later, early in the morning, Marina rang the doorbell.

Olga immediately told her about the missing dog. Marina sat down on the floor in the hall and put her face in her hands. Only when she took her hands away did Olga notice that her whole face was covered in red spots.

“Good God, what's wrong with you? Is it an allergy?” Olga said.

“No. I need a bath. I shouldn't have bothered going there. It's caused nothing but trouble.” Marina sniffled, and rushed into the bathroom without taking off her raincoat.

She ran the water a long time, until Kostya woke up. He had to brush his teeth and get ready for school. Olga knocked on the bathroom door; it opened right away. Skinny as a fish skeleton, her body covered with red marks, scratches, and bruises, Marina stood there in front of Olga in her wet bra and underwear. All her clothes were floating in the bathtub, and the surface of the water was full of small, dark red globs. Heavens above, they were bedbugs!

Olga told Kostya to wash in the kitchen. She hurriedly fed him breakfast and sent him off to school. She found a nightgown for Marina to put on.

“Let's have some coffee.”

Ilya was on a trip. If he had been home, they probably wouldn't have been able to spend this time together. They were like sisters: Olga the elder one, and Marina, confused and nearly eaten alive by bedbugs, the younger one.

“The first night was just an orgy of drunkenness. My friend was there, too—what a pig! He begged and begged for me to come, and then, in the middle of the night, he went off with some girl and left me alone with these complete strangers. In the morning I went out with them to walk around town in the cold and rain. We were drinking vodka in little dives and bars, and then we bought some kind of pastries to eat and just wandered around all day. No one invited me to stay overnight. My friend had disappeared altogether. I called him at home, and they told me they hadn't seen him for a whole week. What could I do? I went to the train station, but they were completely out of tickets. I called another girl, a friend of a friend, and she invited me to hang out with her. I waited in the station for three hours before she showed up. She looked like an awful person, but I went with her anyway.

“She took me to Saigon, some sort of café, like our Molodezhnaya. I liked it there, and I got to know another bunch of people. We went to Peterhof, outside the city, and wandered around there for two days. I ran out of money. Everyone sort of left one by one, until there were just two guys and me left. They took me to the university dormitories, which were empty, since it's summer break, except for some sketchy types, petty thugs and all that. Well, we ended up crashing there, sharing a room. I'm going to skip the next part, since I don't want to traumatize you. Right up until it happened, I didn't realize what was going on; but I didn't scream. Why should I scream? It was my own fault. I should have known I was just asking for trouble. And I got it. Well, I tried to struggle a bit, but those guys were hefty, they pinned me down. Then I just collapsed, like I was dead. To be honest, I was drunk. That night I woke up feeling like I had been scalded with boiling water. And it was light outside—those goddamn white nights and all that. It was so disorienting. And I love the nighttime. But there, it's like there's no real day or night, like some weird twilight, twenty-four/seven. And my whole body was burning, like it was on fire. And then my eyes almost popped out of my head—the walls were covered with polka dots, and the dots were moving toward me! I look down—and I'm covered in bedbugs! I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was a swarm of them, a whole army! There was no place to wash, just one small sink in the WC at the end of the hall. Somehow I managed to get ready to go. I noticed that one of the guys had left, and the other was still passed out in the room. I went through his pockets and took all the money he had on him. I thought it would be enough for a ticket; and even for two. Surprised? Yeah. Well, that's how it happened. Just like that. Which one of them screwed me, I wondered, this one or the other? Then I thought—both of them, most likely. I didn't remember. Anyway, what's the difference? So I split. Straight to the commuter train, then to the train station. There were no tickets, but I bribed the conductor, and she let me stay in her own little compartment in the front of the wagon. I slept the whole way. I kept scratching like a pig, though, I've got to admit. I only realized just now that the bedbugs had hidden in the lining of my raincoat, and crawled out on the sly to bite me. Don't worry, though. I drowned all of them, poured scalding water over them. Olga, what's wrong? Why are you crying? Don't, please, or I'll start crying, too. And now Hera's gone!”